I agree with you 100% but I have an interesting personal anecdote, pretty much the opposite.
When I was young I was very shy, painfully shy even into my early 20s. All social outings were family reunions or church.
But I liked computers. So in the early 1990s I bought a computer and tried this thing called the Internet.
By chance I discovered IRC. It was a world of strangers who interacted in real time. I could converse without facing or looking at a person. And at the time I used it for help when working on my PC so I'm a way it was forced interaction.
I've often thought if it wasnt for IRC and other Internet chat applications my life would be quite different. It helped crack my shell of shyness.
In a way you're right interacting with people is the key. But in my situation it was slightly different.
We've mostly burnt the bridge you used to get there.
In the 90s BBS's, IRC and even ICQ had sites to connect people where people would list interests etc, people had ICQ or other icons on their home page to connect and just randomly chat. BBS's and interest groups would have meet ups and yearly BBQs etc. There was an openness, perhaps a little naivety, to connecting with strangers who would eventually become close friends. There was a special sort of novelty being in a conversation with 3 people from all around the globe at the same time.
Now it seems to me much more about connecting up your existing networks. Friends on Facebook or whichever chat program, but not much for random new connections. Meetups are rarer too unless you've joined a local Facebook cycling group or similar. People aren't as open to connecting with the unknown as it's probably a scammer/spammer etc.
I can understand why my kid's generation might feel it's more difficult now. Especially if they don't have much in the way of existing networks.
I don't play online games any more, but my impression is they mostly moved from guild and group style like MMOs, where you got to know people and probably chatted on Teamspeak as well. Now they seem to be mostly random individual match-ups either for pvp or for a dungeon. That seems like it would take away many of the possibilities.
The element that you might not be aware of is Discord. Primarily a chat and voice communication app but its divided up into individual servers run by community members for free where each is like a Slack server if you are familiar with that software.
I'm not in the child age group, but I've made friends this way as a 31 year old.
I think it’s fair to consider IRC a social tool. It’s build around small communities made up of people who both belong to and run the various rooms. So within that you have a social structure, you have familiarity and you have social hierarchies.
This is different from most “social” platforms on the modern web. Reddit, twitter, Facebook, Snapchat, instagram, hackernews and so on are all global villages, operated by a centralized organ which doesn’t really moderate. So you have anarchy, no-familiarity, no structure and no real visible hierarchy.
When you were on IRC you’d meet the same people every day, you got to know them and they you. By contrast we probably won’t ever run into each other again once we finish this specific conversation. You might not even read my post unless you specifically chose to do so.
A lot of the internet is like this now, and there is really nothing social about most social media.
I don't think is has that much to do with technology. Just that the people who got online in the 90s were likely more curious about new things and other people than the general population (while there were certainly exceptions). The opposite is probably true today, especially in things like tech or other general Internet things.
IRC had closed or private channels and the open channels were heavily moderated as well. I was a #linux moderator on EFnet for several years.
I believe the success of IRC is not due to the greatness of the tool but the userbase. It was pretty much university students world-wide and a few others. Similar behaviours, trainings, ideals etc. Facebook has a lot more diversity and thus conflict.
IRC back in the days was literally another world. It was something special. You could bond with other online users like family members even though the only thing you knew about them was their nickname. We have more advance technologies now but we would never be able to experience anything like IRC again. Slack and Discord servers today are not even close.
I think because you're a bit jaded and have had the experience of IRC as your first relay chat makes you bias towards it, whereas a kid experiencing Discord for the first time might have the same feelings as you did towards IRC.
Uh, IRC still exists. Not only that, but you can use IRC in the browser, on places like Freenode and Snoonet.
I'm currently on freenode #reprap right now, talking to 300 some different people. We're still doing exactly what you're nostalgic for. And, I've met a handful of them in person at 3d printing conventions. (Link: http://webchat.freenode.net/?channels=reprap to chat on IRC right now)
Just because shiny new thing's moved in, doesn't mean that the old thing still isn't in use!
I'm also the same nickname on freenode as I am here. And still cranky as ever!
Or maybe you would have grown out of the shyness naturally over time as you found your place in the world and grew into an adult. Guess we’ll never know eh.
When I was young I was very shy, painfully shy even into my early 20s. All social outings were family reunions or church.
But I liked computers. So in the early 1990s I bought a computer and tried this thing called the Internet.
By chance I discovered IRC. It was a world of strangers who interacted in real time. I could converse without facing or looking at a person. And at the time I used it for help when working on my PC so I'm a way it was forced interaction.
I've often thought if it wasnt for IRC and other Internet chat applications my life would be quite different. It helped crack my shell of shyness.
In a way you're right interacting with people is the key. But in my situation it was slightly different.